i’m not doing a very good job of being here. on the other hand, i’m doing a sterling job of not being here. i mean, i have been here, only i’ve been working. that 300-page textbook job evolved — over more 1-and-2am bedtimes than i care for — into a 384-page textbook job. it’s not over yet, but it is back in the hands of the editorial department, for now.

a couple of weeks ago, i wasn’t actually here at all. i was in melbourne, where the tree outside the cottage industry shop on gertrude street is adorned with a patchwork of lace doilies, and the adjacent sign post wrapped up in a crocheted cozy. all very apt, for the proprietor of cottage industry, one penelope durston, crafts the loveliest arm warmers in a mindboggling range of dusty hues. i must not give in to them, because i already have three pairs of arm warmers, however a couple of years ago i did surrender to a rather fetching shopping bag she’d made out of two vintage tea towels (one was covered in fancy historical teapots and the other presented a nautical scene involving lobsters and lobster pots).

but yes, now i’m back in sydney, with a little breathing room, and where it turns out another pair of arm warmers would not be unwelcome when the temperature dips treacherously at night.

no matter, i turn on my electric blanket before taking the kid into the shower, and then after she’s all clean and shiny, we tuck ourselves into bed and read. we’ve just finished “charlotte’s web”, and towards the end, i started getting that feeling of needing to put the book in the freezer. but we bravely pressed on, into the face of certain death.

afterwards, the kid was subdued, and ventured, “i have a sore throat. you know how sometimes when you’re sad and your throat hurts?” she touched the base of her neck. mmmyes, i was certainly familiar with that feeling.

i could put it down to sleep deprivation. or maybe just the passing of time, or youth, or spiders. maybe the thought of being not here, some day six months from now.

it’s been quiet ’round here, i know. well, not so much literally: we’re currently a week into school holidays, so it’s round-the-clock chatter (and singing, and shrieking) from at least one of us. the other of us has been afflicted with the endless lurgy, and then somewhere in there, halfway through the course of yummy yellow-brown antibiotics, i started laying out a textbook on managing blood-thinning medication. 300-odd pages of text and tables and fun diagrams with lots of arrows. lots.

i am less than halfway through, and it may turn out to be 400 pages after all.

i can’t work during the day, so instead we do school holiday things like wake up at 9.30, and eat brioche and apricot jam, and go to the art gallery, or see children’s theatre… this afternoon we walked through misty drizzle to see mr freezy down at the sydney theatre company, in which a high-octane tale of an ice cream scoop unfolds, as does a great mess of flour and sprinkles and jelly babies and drinking straws, and a chocolate-iced donut is thrown into the audience.

afterwards i had a hankering for an eton mess and tried in vain to find the fratelli fresh down by the pier so that we could go to sopra — does anyone know where exactly it is? but anyway, the rain kicked in a couple more notches and sent us scurrying back into the city, where, oh hey! central baking depot.

moments after we plonked our umbrellas in the bucket by the door, the skies broke open. but we didn’t care — i had just enough cashmoney for two hot chocolates and a slice of blueberry-cinnamon-apple butter cake. the large hot chocolate is only a dollar more than the regular, but twice the size, and fully chocolatey. and just look at that cup — so covetable with its heavy china and gold trim.

on monday, it was too wet to sit outdoors with a pie floater from across the road, but we armed ourselves with BBQ pork buns — the baked kind, with the sticky glaze — from furama cake shop in chinatown, and holed up inside the powerhouse museum for several hours. the fashion week exhibition was good fun, and the 80s exhibition was more sensory overload than trip down memory lane, but it was the interactive batik design simulator which held the kid’s interest for more than fifteen minutes. that and the wonderful school holiday activity inspired by sonya gee‘s historic matchbox project.

$2 bought us an empty matchbox, a seat at the big table, and a steady stream of crafty supplies. the kid set out to make a robot cat, but in the end, it was just a regular cat… with a hidden stash of jewels in her slide-out belly. (it’s on until 18 july, if yer interested.)

and in-between? there’ve been rides on the flying fox in victoria park, a mid-week dimsum feast with grandparents, two loads of laundry in the face of the rain, and a little bit of a thrill to finally read myself in print (PAN magazine, last seen at magnation in newtown). also, i’ve been trying to see how best to get any work done during school holidays, but my shortlived experiment involving working until 2am has proved to be unsustainable, with me stumbling somewhat dizzy and nauseated through the rocks today, after just three late nights.

saturday morning, we’re headed to melbourne for week 2 of the holidays. i wonder how many pages of book layout i can squeeze in before then.

still busy! here’s what i’ve been up to: designing all manner of stuff and ephemera for the arab film festival. it’s traveling around australia in july, but the website‘s just been launched and will tell you all you need to know.

what i’ll tell you is that across the road from the sydney (read: parramatta) venue, there is a lebanese pastry shop selling treats in all manner of sticky – flaky – nutty – sweet. that is all.

this is totally one of my favourite jobs i’ve done in a while. truly, the postcards arrived back from the printers, and i felt like an actual graphic designer, and not someone who works at home for five hours a day while the kid’s at school (and another two or three after she goes to bed for the night, yawn).

what happens when work and chocolate collide?

i’m glad you asked: several weeks ago, a cardboard carton showed up on my doorstep, containing an unadorned packet of foil-wrapped easter eggs. the kid was immediately interested, but i managed to beat her back. this was a sample pack of cocolo easter eggs for which i had to design an enticing label in time for the lead up to chocfest 2010 easter.

now you can own a packet of these too. i believe they are being sold in independent health / organic food stores around town. the chocolate is organic and fairtrade, and brought to you by an australian company (though it’s made in switzerland, so count those air miles), and comforting in the way that milk chocolate is.

i still have the mock-up i made, printed up on a 15-year-old bubble jet and stapled to the pack. it’s been sitting on my desk for the past month or so — i wasn’t sure if i had to return the sample bag to the chocolate people. right now i’m leaning towards “not”; those foil wrappers are glinting away awful purty.

i’m filling in a questionaire at the moment, and the number one question is: what is your secret food shame? it took me aaages to think of something. i mean, i eat a lot of crap, but i’m not necessarily ashamed of it. i recently came to the conclusion that my favourite food may well be hot chips, but i wear that badge proudly. (figuratively, mind; i might now have to set about making an actual thing with a pin in it, oh boy!) i don’t like oysters? is it not possible to have a dedicated interest in food while studiously avoiding those slimy, putrid bivalves? sure!

and then it struck me: my secret food shame is that i horde food. i don’t mean to. behold, this rather dramatic looking chocolate mooncake that i won off grab your fork way back in — ahem — september last year. where does the time go, i ask you!

do not fear. it has been cryogenically preserved in my fridge, still sealed in its ornate plastic packet with its little sachet of desiccant. i broke it open this afternoon, desperate for a mid-annual-report-layout snack. the bag emitted a barely perceptible sigh as i cut it open; at last the mooncake would fulfill its destiny.

it was the smell that struck me: an aroma so rich and chocolatey that i was surprised when i bit into the skin, and discovered it actually wasn’t. instead it was mild and cakey, with an undercurrent of regular mooncake pastry. no, the chocolate lay beneath.

GAH. a big, moist mouthful of fudgy chocolate. mmm… quite trufflicious. and here’s the surprise: a pure white heart of mochi. well, ok. so i wasn’t so surprised. having eaten a couple of them not quite — ahem — six months ago, i knew of the chewy treat within. and also, there’s the sticker on the pack that says, “o-mochi mooncake”.

yes folks, this is mooncake innovation at its… well, that level a little way short of “finest”. the mochi isn’t really there for flavour i think, but it does a good job breaking up the mass of sweet, sweeet, flavoured lotus seed paste — mellows out the flavour while providing some thought-provoking texture. and how striking it is, against the chocolate.

i like it. taste aside, i love the sharp impressions in the skin, from the mould. it looks like it’s been carved out of ebony, no? the macha omochi mooncake looked to be an objet d’art crafted in jade. when mooncake season comes round again, i’ll be looking out for these in the usual chinese grocery shops.

so yes, i am a little bit embarrassed that it’s taken me six months to eat it. but hip hip hurray for those food technicians who engineered this long life mooncake, still delicious after all that time.

anyway. the reason i’m filling in this questionaire is that a picture i submitted on a whim to eat. drink. blog. was selected to be part of the SBS photo exhibition at the inaugural australian food and drink bloggers’ conference in melbourne this coming weekend. hopefully it doesn’t melt away into a little puddle, my snapshot of a watermelon and pineapple ice pop, amongst such illustrious, gorgeously styled, DSLR macro company.

an adorable mini chocolate kugelhopf from lüneburger. it is a rich burst of cocoa for a mid-afternoon slump, moist and just a little bit sticky (awful in late summer weather but just about perfect in a cake). and scattered here and there, chocolate chips. such a tiny treat! and at $2, quite the cheap thrill.

a couple of months ago, i volunteered to put together the newsletter of the kid’s playschool’s parents’ committee. i didn’t really think it through at the time, just figured it would be a catalyst to get some non-work-related design done. however, what it actually meant was that we had to make a special trip into school the other evening to attend a meeting. and i had to take minutes! because i also had to write the darn thing!!

it also meant a couple of trays of flaccid sandwiches — plastic cheese and vegemite, and plastic cheese and ham — and tepid water drunk out of the children’s regulation red plastic tumblers, but let’s forget that ever happened.

after it was all over, we caught the bus back to balmain with our fingers crossed, and got off the bus right opposite the new sushi place that’s just opened on darling street. it threw a welcoming golden light out into the night, and we stepped through the door to find the last two empty stools at the counter.

it’s a small room, seats about twenty. one waitress in front, two or three chefs out back. and a sushi train! sugoi! which, incidentally, is the name of the restaurant.

you probably already know this, but i l o v e sushi train: all those possibilities going ’round and ’round on colourful little plates. sure, there is that stressful element — similar to when you go for dimsum — where you can’t really relax and enjoy the eats because you are always keeping watch for something (better) that might come along, but sometimes you find a place where everything looks good, and none of it has the dehydrated edges of something that’s been riding the conveyer belt carousel for two hours…

and sugoi could be one of those places. we fished a plate of sashimi off the train; the temperature and texture of the fish was perfect. there was a pretty roll of tempura vegetables wrapped up in a delicate pea-green crepe, and topped with a dab of salad cream and a sprig of loveliness. there was spider roll! which i really do quite like. and at the end, there was no red bean mochi topped in whipped cream and strawberries and syrup like they do at tomodachi, but there was a fruit salad of melons, grapes, tinned pineapple and a slice of strawberry, in a glass goblet, on a red plate.

the newsletter has so far been well-received by the committee.

the days streak by like lightning.

our baubles arrived in the mail today: shiny smooth perspex clouds, with dangly lightning bolts. i couldn’t decide on gold lightning or pink, so i got one of each. you have until 10am tomorrow (wednesday) to get a bunch of plastic jewellery for a song. these ones are most appropriate for the weather right now.

right now, i’m working on a job that doesn’t want to end. last night i breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to write up a hefty invoice, but this afternoon, there it was again, mocking me from my inbox. truly, it makes me want to staple my head.

it didn’t stop us, though, from watching hours of kid’s programming on tv as we played a gambly game of “i wonder if the rain’s stopped now, so we can go out” (no.). it didn’t stop us building a slightly flawed train network (much like our great city’s) across the red carpet.

it didn’t stop us from making toasted cheese/green apple/green peppercorn mustard sandwiches — lightly toast some nice grainy bread, spread each piece with a little butter and top with thinly sliced granny smiths and tasty cheese. stick them under the grill until cheese bubbles. dab mustard over one of the slices, then plop the other on top. sweet-sour, wilted-crunchy all at once, with a double thick layer of oozy, mustardy cheese bang in the middle.

we split a mandarin for dessert, and then we bravely went forth into madeleine battle, round two. it was only 2pm, and the rain was relentless.

these are busy days. i’ve been laying out the program booklet for the sydney arab film festival for a week now. last friday, as i waited in the train station beneath the airport, i fielded a call — the most crystal clear reception in an underground station! — asking me, only partly in jest, why i was not at home laying stuff out. but it seems even super urgent and late jobs are entitled to five rounds of author’s corrections, so here i am, the millstone still tied to my neck. a very sleek millstone, mind, if i do say so myself.

night times at the computer call for simultaneously stimulating and comforting snacks. a cup of tea, definitely, and a rotating roster of small sweet things. a square (or four) of chocolate one night, a raspberry cream biscuit another.

this particular raspberry cream was unexpectedly good, though somewhat smoushed from being in its paper bag for too long. we found it at the cookie man concession at david jones, nestled close to the caramel creams. you get a crunchy shortbread sandwich, filled with sugary “cream” and anointed with a dab of sticky red jam. the caramel’s definitely on the cards for the next trip to DJ foodhall.

speaking of caramel…

i never dallied the mille feuille at adriano zumbo patissier, not even that season he filled it with mandarin creme. i don’t know what held me back — all that pastry cream, all that pastry — but i suspect it was that there was always something pinker on display. if he’d just remolded it into a cream horn, i totally would have bitten.

but all this is in the past now, because to herald the autumn, there it was: the salted butter caramel mille feuille. after a couple of weeks of missing each other in the shop, i finally had one cornered. and… the planks of pastry were crisp and very nicely sugar-glazed, the fat lines of creme patisserie most enticing. and while the richness of it was lush on my tongue, and i felt completely full after a mere third of the cake, i was left wanting more. more! more salt! more caramel even. i still have two thirds, just to make sure. but, just, more.

zumbo is a riot of colour at the moment: a rash of new cakes hit the counter in the last few weeks. there’s a fancy piped meringue thing crowned in fat, shiny cherries. there’s a slab of chocolate (and chocolate rice crispies!) beneath a wave of pistachio something. there is a multi-layered pink thing in a glass wearing a jaunty pink macaron beret, another incarnation of the macaron marie (ispahan), which will surely be the next thing i pick. but oh! the pink things to be had!

a week ago, we had breakfast for lunch at circle cafe. well. i had breakfast for lunch; everyone else had lunchy-type things.

the tea service at circle is a beautiful thing. sure, it could do with a few more leaves to the pot (and some sort of removable tea-leaf container so that whatever leaves in the pot don’t sit and stew in the time it takes you to drink three cups)… but these days, when a cafe tea experience usually involves a flaccid teabag in a stingy cup of lukewarm water for the same price as a barista-pulled coffee, taking tea at circle is none too shabby.

i am taking tea right now, but it has gone cold. it is 1.22 in the morning after all. i have lucked into some work, you see, and this means that after a morning of fun out with the kid and the sister, and an afternoon of gingerbread-baking, and a late evening dinner of ruffle-edged pasta with broccoli, asparagus and fetta (with a side of giggles), i am moving slabs of text around while the house sleeps.

throbby head aside, it is a nice feeling. not so nice is the feeling of blog posts left unwritten. i have so much to tell you! perhaps tomorrow i could sneak in a tale of the cream-filled mozzarella…